Owen Carey"Superior Donuts" is a comedy with lots of brisk, funny dialogue. But Tracy Letts' play also is sprinkled with references -- to the cycles of urban decay and gentrification, to race relations, to the American immigrant experience, to war and family and ethical responsibilities -- and actor Bill Geisslinger hopes to bring out its dark and meaningful undertones.

Talk about your hard act to follow.

In 2007, Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company presented the world premiere of the play “August: Osage County,” written by longtime company member Tracy Letts. Earlier plays such as “Killer Joe” and “Bug” (described by The New York Times’ Charles Isherwood as “plasma-saturated thrillers”) had earned Letts some critical respect, but the reception to “August,” a caustic comedy of mid-American family dysfunction on an epic scale, was something else. The play moved to Broadway, won the Tony Award for best play and a Pulitzer Prize. A film version, to star Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, is in the works.

So along comes “Superior Donuts,” which Letts had started writing before “August” made him a theatrical superstar. Smaller, milder, less audacious, “Donuts” did well, but often was damned with faint praise, as critics couldn’t help but see it in relation to its predecessor.

“I liked it when I saw it on Broadway, but only when I started working on it did I recognize how great it is,” says Nause, who’s directing the Artists Repertory Theatre production that opens Friday.

“It really speaks to the depth of Letts’ work. He refuses to get pigeonholed.”

Set in a small donut shop on the north side of Chicago, Letts’ latest story concerns an aging Polish-American shop owner fading into insignificance and indifference, and his friendship with a young African-American employee who has boundless promise but a past that’s gaining on him. The relationship fits a lot of familiar templates -- old/young, white/black, repressed/effusive, pessimist/optimist -- and along with the zippy comic dialogue, it has put lots of folks in mind of a TV sit-com. But there are subtle layers of deeper meaning to the script, which Nause sees as rich with allusions to the American experience, to the ambitions of immigrants, to the pursuit of happiness and the confronting of obstacles.

“In all of his work you could say that the themes border on cliche,” Nause allows. “But his treatment of them is constantly surprising. There’s a literary engine under all his work that I find a delight.”

Bill Geisslinger, who stars as shop owner Arthur Przybyszewski, had his own concerns, until Nause assured him that they’d dig into the emotional and historical nuances.

“My hope,” Geisslinger says, “is that I’m really leaning into the darker side of things.”

Artists Rep has a history with Letts, having staged “Killer Joe” and “Bug” and an adaptation of Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters” that the company commissioned from him just as “August” was about to send his stock skyrocketing. For “Superior Donuts,” the company has assembled an especially promising cast, headed by Geisslinger, who was a standout here two years ago in a magnificent production of Conor McPherson’s “The Seafarer.”

“We have a great dialogue, we have a vocabulary in common,” Geisslinger says of working with Nause. “And Allen is the most generous director/producer I’ve ever worked with. I’m a director myself, so I always want to give my ideas on what’s happening in rehearsal and everything. He’s fine with it, and it only makes me better to be allowed to do that.”

A longtime Oregon Shakespeare Festival stalwart, Geisslinger will be focused on Letts most of the year, performing in the OSF “August: Osage County” from late April till early November. But first he’ll benefit from the presence of another OSF veteran, Linda Alper, who’ll be making her first appearance at Artists Rep.

The key, though, could be in the stage chemistry between Geisslinger and Vin Shambry, who plays Franco Wicks, the young would-be novelist who talks his way into a job and nudges his boss toward hope and courage.

“Part of all of us can identify with both these characters,” Nause says. “We all want to give up sometime. Yet we all want to believe in possibility.”